Pages

Saturday, 22 December 2012

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

As luck would have it, I
bought this book from a charity shop for 50 cents. The Call of the Wild by Jack
London is one of the books from the booklist that I created with Jon Bear. You
can also download the book for free at Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
.

The Call of the Wild is
the first book that I have read where the main character is an animal. The book
is about a dog called Buck. Buck is a mix of Saint Bernard and Scotch Shepard.
At the start of the book, Buck has a good life for a dog. He is owned by a
judge who has a large property, a big house and lotsof servants. He is well
treated by everyone in the household. Buck’s life changes when he is stolen and
sold to become a sled dog. He is transported from his sunny home in California
to the Yukon, a territory that borders between Alaska and Canada where there is
a Gold Rush.

Buck is passed on to many
masters to pull sledges across the harsh artic terrain. He is treated badly by
most of his masters, getting beaten up and forced to work until
exhaustion.All the dogs are treated
cruelly, whipped and clubbed and shot when no longer able to pull a sledge. To
survive in the new environment Buck starts to recall the instincts of his
ancestors, he listens to the call of the wild.

I
enjoyed reading this book. Jack London’s writing is beautifully descriptive and
I could really believe that the story was told from the point of view of a dog.
I liked how Buck and the other animals couldn’t verbally communicate with each
other like in Disney movies. Buck used his body language to show how he was
thinking and feeling. I thought Buck’s transformation from loveable house pet
to working dog was well done. There was a steady progress showing Buck’s psyche
change as he accepted his new life and there was a change in him physically as
worked during the months.

His development (or retrogression) was rapid. His muscles became hard as
iron, and he grew callous to all ordinary pain. He achieved an internal as well
as external economy. He could eat anything, no matter how loathsome or
indigestible; and once eaten, the juices of his stomach extracted the last
least particle of nutriment; and his blood carried it to the farthest reaches
of his body, building it into the toughest of tissues.

(London, 1903, p33).

I wished that my copy had
a map of the region that Buck was in so I could judge the distance of his
travels.A glossary would have been a
nice feature as well for some of the sled stuff that was mentioned in the book;
as well as some explanations of the time period the story was based in.

I think this book is
targeted towards boys but you might like this book if you like Black Beauty by Anna Sewell or
watched Balto or read White Fang, which was another book written by Jack London.
The
Call of the Wild is a quick read. For a fast reader, you could probably finish
it in 10 minutes so it’s a nice little book to read while you are waiting for
something or a want a short story to read in bed.The Call of the Wild has been adapted to film
many times so you can always watch a movie as well.